As Radcliffe was not equipped with science facilities, she spent most of her time over the next four years taking classes in Harvard Yard.

She was one of, if not the only woman in many of these classes, and it was apparent Harvard was not ready to accept her among its men.

"The dean of freshmen [Mildred Sherman] told me to be a Latin major," Beutler says.

And resistance to her decision to study physics was even worse from the department itself.

"When I met with my advisor, Wendell Hinkle Furry, he said 'We don't want girls in the physics department,'" Beutler remembers. But she refused to be deterred.

"I'm a stubborn person. I wanted to do it, so I did," she says.

Beutler chuckles as she says that, years later, she presented a collection of her research before an audience at a science conference.

"At the break, I saw Furry was there," she says. "I went up to him and

said, 'Professor Furry, as you see, I'm still in physics.'"

Marriage and Triple Masters

But Beutler didn't rail against all the expectations society set for her. She became engaged to be married at the end of her junior year and tied the knot after graduation the following year.

"He was an MIT man, but my mother was still happy because I was getting married," she says.

But, husband in hand, Beutler decided it was time to embark on a career.

In 1951, she obtained a masters degree in education from Boston University and had expected to go into teaching, but instead accepted a job offer from North American Aviation.

"I worked as an engineer designing guided missile systems," Beutler says. "But I was paid only half of what my male colleagues were."

It was gender-based inequality that motivated Beutler and some of her peers to found the Society of Women Engineers in 1952.